The Sleeping Sword (3 page)

Venetia was the daughter of the second Barforth brother, Mr. Nicholas Barforth, a gentleman whose restless ambition and overwhelming shrewdness had not allowed him to be content with the fortune his father had left him and which he and his brother had divided between them. Blanche's father, Uncle Blaize, had taken good care of his money, making absolutely certain that it amply sufficed for the very pleasant life he enjoyed with Aunt Faith. But Venetia's father had set himself, with a singleness of purpose rare even in the Law Valley, to increase his inheritance, had extended and diversified it to become the owner not only of the original Barforth mills of Lawcroft Fold and Low Cross where worsteds of the very finest quality continued to be woven, but of such gigantic undertakings as the Law Valley Woolcombers, the Law Valley Dyers and Finishers, and, more recently, a brand new structure of Italianate design built on the site of an old mill at Nethercoats where the weaving of silk and velvet was making Mr. Nicholas Barforth's fortune for the second, the third, or even for the fourth time.

Yet his acute judgment in the field of commerce had not extended to his private life and even his well-wishers—relatively few, it seemed, in number—were forced to admit that none of his personal relationships had prospered. He had quarrelled violently and unforgiveably with his brother and no hostess in Cullingford would have dared invite both Blaize and Nicholas Barforth to her table at the same time. He had quarrelled with all his mill-managers in turn, making no secret that although he paid high wages a man needed nerves of steel and the stamina of an ox to earn them. He was known to live in a state of bitter discord with his son, to have little time for Venetia, his daughter, while his relationship with his wife had been a source of gossip and speculation in Cullingford for many a long day.

Unlike his brother who had chosen Aunt Faith from the manufacturing middle-classes, Mr. Nicholas Barforth, following his sister Caroline's lead perhaps, had married into the landed gentry. But while Caroline Barforth's marriage had brought her Listonby Park and the title that went with it, Nicholas Barforth had received nothing but a fine-boned, high-bred, quite penniless lady and—it was rumoured—a great deal of trouble. For once, long ago in Venetia's early childhood, her mother had run away from her father and had been brought back again—or so we believed—a mystery Cullingford had never solved to its satisfaction, the gentleman in the story being unapproachable, the lady well-nigh invisible.

‘How is your dear mamma?' Cullingford's matrons, unwilling to be cheated of so promising a scandal, were fond of asking Venetia.

‘Very well indeed,' was her only reply. But the fact that her mother lived almost exclusively at her house in the country, the ancient estate of Galton Abbey with its few hundred scrubby acres and its decaying mansion—a far cry from Listonby Park—which had been in Mrs. Barforth's family for generations, while her father resided permanently at
his
house in Cullingford, troubled Venetia deeply. And this pall of scandal hovering around her parents—for if they
were
separated then there must have been a mighty scandal indeed—had drawn us together; Venetia about whose mother strange things were whispered, nothing proved, and myself, Grace Agbrigg, motherless daughter of a man who, by his marriage to a rich and disreputable woman, had invited scandal and for most of the time managed to ignore it.

Venetia was not beautiful like Blanche, her figure being of an extreme quite boyish slenderness, something sudden and brittle about her movements, an air—every now and then—that was both vulnerable and eager; for whereas Blanche had always known what she wanted from life Venetia quite simply wanted everything life had to offer, its joys and sorrows, triumphs and disasters, as soon as she could lay her hands on them and in double measure. She had a thin, fine-textured face, a delicate skin, eyebrows that flew away at a wide angle, hair the rich colour of a woodland fox, her pointed auburn looks owing nothing to her tough-grained Barforth father but coming entirely from her mother, the lady who had been the subject, or the cause, of scandal. And although Venetia herself had done nothing of a scandalous nature Cullingford believed, on the whole, in the saying ‘like mother like daughter' and many would have advised Mr. Nicholas Barforth, had they dared, to get his daughter married while he was able.

But today, standing meekly behind immaculate, triumphant Blanche, we were shielded from past gossip, being simply ‘the bridesmaids', anonymous girls in pretty dresses provided like the icing on the cake, the lace frills around the bridal posies, simply to decorate. It was, of course, a lovely wedding, somewhat to the surprise of the bridegroom's mother, Aunt Caroline, who, with her vast enthusiasm for entertaining, her twenty-five years experience of balls and dinners, house parties, hunting parties, parties of all shapes and sizes at Listonby had found it hard to leave to Aunt Faith the planning of so vital an event as the wedding of Listonby's eldest son. But, despite her predictions that Aunt Faith would forget this and neglect that, nothing had been overlooked, nothing left to chance.

The horses which brought the bridal procession to church were all high-stepping, glossy with good health and good grooming and—as Aunt Caroline had insisted was essential for a wedding—all perfectly, correctly grey. The carriages were lined with white satin, the church transformed into a flower-garden of white and apricot blossoms, the aristocratic Chards on one side of the aisle, a sprinkling of baronets and Members of Parliament, at least three bishops, half a dozen generals and one real duke among them; the manufacturing Barforths on the other side, millmasters, ironmasters, bankers, builders, although the differences between them were less marked than they had once been. A commercial gentleman of a generation ago might have felt a sense of achievement, of having breached a stronghold hitherto impregnable to men of his station had he succeeded in bestowing his daughter on a High Church, High Tory squire. But now, although all three of those Chard bishops still preached the doctrine that God, having called all men to the position he had selected for them in life wished them to stay there, the Barforths knew better than that, my manufacturing Uncle Blaize escorting his daughter to her noble bridegroom with grace and good humour, perfectly at ease among the ‘ruling classes', especially nowadays when, in many cases, their power to go on ruling depended on the co-operation of his—and his brother's—money.

A lovely wedding. There was a flood of golden sunshine as we left the church, a cloudless summer sky, no need at all for the huge marquee spread like the palace of an Arabian prince on the lawns of Aunt Faith's home in suburban Elderleigh. There were bowls of pale roses on every table, in accordance with Aunt Caroline's oft repeated suggestion that in Aunt Faith's place she would be
lavish
with the flowers. The menu-cards—printed in silver and in French—had the additional extravagance of silver lace borders. The cake, which Aunt Caroline had feared would never be big enough to conform to Chard standards of size and grandeur, was immense, intricate, surrounded by sprays of the same white roses and apricot carnations which made up the bridal bouquet and which would be distributed later to each female guest.

There was champagne, violins concealed romantically by the swaying summer trees, curiosity, a little mild envy, a few sentimental tears. ‘A handsome couple'everyone was saying and so they were, Blanche looking more fragile than ever among the dark, large-boned Chards, her bridegroom and his two brothers with whom I was not well acquainted, for unlike the young commercial gentlemen I knew who had all been educated at our local grammar school, the Chard boys had gone away to school at an early age, returning at midsummer and Christmastime when I had found their loud, drawling voices irritating, their manners condescending. And they had looked so much alike—Dominic, Noel, Gideon—that they had seemed to me to be quite interchangeable; self-opinionated boys who would grow to be haughty men of the kind one encountered on the hunting field, in fashionable regiments and fashionable London clubs or half asleep on the benches of the House of Commons.

Dominic's future, of course, had been mapped out for him at birth for he was the eldest, the heir to his father's lands and titles, Squire of Listonby, Master of Foxhounds, Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates, while his twin brother Noel—born ten vital minutes too late to claim the inheritance—and Gideon, 18 months younger still, were simply the extra sons who—unless some tragic fate should befall the heir—would be obliged to make their own way in the world, their father having no secondary titles, no spare estates to bestow on them. Following the family tradition of service Noel—it had been decided as Aunt Caroline first looked into his cradle—would go into the army, Gideon into the church where, having completed the preliminaries of promotion their mother saw no reason why they should not join the prosperous ranks of Chard generals, Chard bishops and make advantageous marriages while they were about it. And Aunt Caroline had expressed these aims so often, with such total certainty, that in my half-attending mind they had become aims no longer but realities. Noel
was
a general, Gideon
was
a bishop so that I had been mildly surprised on my return from Switzerland to meet a very gallant Lieutenant Noel Chard and to hear some very strange rumours indeed in respect to Gideon.

‘I suppose one can feel for Aunt Caroline,' Blanche had informed me airily. ‘For she has never liked her plans to be upset, and first there was Dominic who was supposed to be a bachelor until his fifties, or so she hoped, so she could go on queening it at Listonby. And now there is Gideon.'

And when I had expressed a degree of interest I did not feel, she went on, ‘Yes, indeed. Poor Aunt Caroline. She had set her heart on making Gideon a bishop and he has turned her down flat. He says there is no money in religion, which surprises me since all the clergymen we know seem to live very well—except that I think Gideon means a
lot
of money and spending it on things clergymen don't have, or shouldn't have. I expect you are dying to hear what it is he means to do?'

‘I expect you are dying to tell me.'

‘He says he will go where the money is—heavens, I can picture Aunt Caroline's face when he said that—and so he has made an approach to my Uncle Nicholas Barforth with a view to joining him in his mills. Yes, you may stare, indeed you may, for I stared too. A Chard in trade! Whatever next? The Barforth blood coming out, I suppose, and Aunt Caroline cannot bear to mention it—not to her London friends and her foxhunting friends at any rate. But since we all know the trouble Uncle Nicholas Barforth has with Cousin Gervase—although Venetia, of course, will not hear a word against her brother—well, I think he may be glad of Gideon. Poor Aunt Caroline, indeed. For if Gideon does well with Uncle Nicholas he will surely try to marry Venetia. Well, of course he will, Grace. In fact he
must
marry her in order to secure his position, for if he does not then someone else surely will. And that “someone”, if he has the sense he was born with, will be bound to cut Gideon out of the business. It absolutely stands to reason.'

So it did, and remembering it now on Blanche's own wedding day, I shivered, for I was an heiress too—like Venetia, like Blanche—who might be so easily married not for the pleasure of my company but because marriage to me brought with it the eventual ownership of Fieldhead Mills. Naturally my father would take care in his selection, would look for a bridegroom who was sound in business, high of principle, even kind-hearted. But I knew that the dread of it, the sheer humiliation of being courted for anything other than myself, had made me aloof and suspicious of men since I first understood the size of my fortune and its implications. I could not accept it. I did not think Venetia could accept it either and, watching Blanche for whom it all seemed perfectly natural, who considered her money a fair enough exchange for Dominic's title, I shivered once again.

Aunt Faith received her guests with enormous tact and skill, necessary accomplishments in a family gathering such as ours where the Chards were uncompromisingly Tory and High Church to a man, the Barforths Liberal in politics and Nonconformist in religion; where it was vital that my father's wife and my father's mother should be kept apart; where my father himself must not be allowed to stray into the company of anyone connected at all closely with the Oldroyd nephews; where Mr. Nicholas Barforth, the uncle of the bride, had not spoken a civil word to his brother, the bride's father, in twenty years; where Mr. Nicholas Barforth's wife, if she came at all, would only come under suffrance, to ‘keep up appearances' and must be sheltered from the curiosity of Cullingford's ladies, the occasionally ribald speculation of our gentlemen.

On Aunt Faith's instructions my Grandmother Agbrigg was at once surrounded by a screen of elderly ladies, my Stepmother Agbrigg just as swiftly introduced to one of the Chard bishops—since what in the world could convey more respectability than that?—and to a merry little gentleman who happened to be the Duke of South Erin, neither particularly rich nor particularly important but a
duke
just the same, and a frequent visitor of Aunt Caroline Chard's at Listonby. But no skill of Aunt Faith's could halt the sudden whispering, the turning of heads, the eyes that pretended not to look and the eyes that looked openly, avidly, when Mr. Nicholas Barforth's carriage was seen on the drive, a lady in a tall green hat beside him, for this was no local scandal, no simple tale of prickly middle-class morality but was of interest to everyone. Mrs. Tessa Delaney had been notorious in Cullingford. Mrs. Agbrigg was still somewhat suspect there. But the whole County of Yorkshire, or the sporting, landed portion of it, was acquainted with Mrs. Georgiana Barforth who was usually to be found not under her husband's imposing roof but in her decaying manor house at Galton Abbey. All three of the Chard bishops knew her. The Chard generals and colonels had served in the same regiment or played cards at the same clubs as her father; the Duke of South Erin had shot grouse over her moor at Galton many a time. And if these gentlemen were inclined to take a broader, easier view than Culllingford, she remained nevertheless a woman who did not appear to lead a regular life, who might be socially very dangerous, or very interesting, to know; who could, in fact, be approached with a familiarity and with an intent no man would permit himself with a lady who was
known
to reside safely in her matrimonial home.